Getting Your Home Ready

Once you’ve decided the time has arrived to sell your home there are many things that can be done to help insure you receive the highest sales price in the shortest amount of time.

Picking a Brokerage and Agent

Deciding who to list with actually requires two separate decisions. The first is which brokerage should I utilize? Things to take into account include reputation, exposure to buyers, tools and technology available to their agents, and staffing. Feel free to ask your potential agent about these things; the resources that a brokerage offers to their agents isn’t something that many buyers and sellers think about, but behind the scenes it can certainly impact your transaction.

Does the brokerage have knowledgeable brokers available to help answer questions by agent? Murney Associates has 4 brokers and a managing broker that combined have more than 135 years experience and knowledge. Our brokers are among the most experienced and knowledgeable in Missouri with a reputation that spans the country.

Is staff onsite to help with all the paperwork for an agent so they can spend more time working with you or marketing your property? Murney Associates has a dedicated closing department with 6 staff members to insure all paperwork is processed for our agents efficiently and accurately.

Is there a 24/7 Information Technology specialist available your agent can call if they have any hiccups computer-wise when trying to market your listing digitally? With more technology available to our agents than any other brokerage in Southwest Missouri, our 4 person tech team is critical in making sure we have the latest tools, that they work properly, and that Murney agents are trained how to use them.

Picking the right agent is another critical decision. Reputation and customer reviews help tremendously because they are a direct reflection of client experience. A couple of things to keep in mind though, a lack of online reviews isn’t necessarily a negative. As a general rule, people are more likely to post a negative review than take the time to post a positive one, so if you find an agent with 5 years experience and no reviews, that’s very possibly an agent with happy clients. The other thing to keep in mind is that some clients perceive a transaction as good or bad, not by their agent, but by how much money they made in a sale or how much they saved in a purchase. While there are factors that can affect pricing (continue reading below), the agent has no more control over home values than a weatherman has control over the weather. A good agent knows to read the market and guide you through the sale or purchase. When deciding which agent to list your home with ask them about their pricing history to help you gauge how well they read the market.

Proper Pricing

Once you have a listing agent, it’s up to you and your agent to determine the listing price of your home. Pricing a home properly is the single most important part of listing your home. If you overprice your home, you run the very real risk of having your home stay on the market longer and losing more money in the long run. Buyers are savvy and can recognize an overpriced home, especially with the advice of their agent. When this happens, they can use the price of your home to justify purchasing a competing listing because it’s priced lower, or you can simply miss out on showings because buyers will just steer clear. The theory is that buyers will simply make an offer and the negotiations will take place from there, but the fact is that many buyers believe it’s not worth the hassle of negotiating a contract (which keeps them from being able to make an offer on another home while negotiating yours) with someone who has an overpriced home because the perception is that the seller is either stubborn or unrealistic. The good news is that Murney agents have more tools, classes, and resources at their disposal than any other brokerage in the area to help clients receive the highest value for their home with the shortest time on the market.

Prepping and Listing the Home

Putting a home on the market is similar to a grand opening. You want the home to make such a good first impression that every buyer that walks through can visualize themselves living there. One of the ways to do that is by decluttering and depersonalizing your home. Vacant homes tend to be better received by buyers because they can immediately imagine their possessions in the home. Prior to listing your home consider removing as many items as you can (you’re going to have to pack soon anyway). Pay special attention to surface areas, overly large items that can make a room appear smaller than it is, and very personal items such as family photographs, so that a buyer can start thinking of this as their home, and not your home.

When it comes to listing the home, you’ll want everything in place before your agent markets the listing or makes it active. The first two weeks of a listing is incredibly important to have phenomenal pictures, good marketing, and a properly priced show-ready home. Buyers who are already looking for a home check for new homes daily that meet their criteria and price range. The first two weeks of listing your home is when you will be the most exposed to all the buyers currently ready to buy and that have already been looking. This is your best opportunity to get the highest priced offer because these are savvy buyers who have been waiting for your home. After the initial marketing time it will be you who is waiting for a new buyer to hit the market.

Marketing

Your Murney agent is uniquely qualified to market your home more effectively than agents with other brokerages. We have more agents than any other brokerage in Southwest Missouri which means our agents talk and network with other Murney agents on a daily basis. This is simply an additional layer of marketing that gets the word of your listing out quicker and to a wider audience. We also take great strides to make sure your home is marketed nationally; our Relocation Department works with numerous transferees each year who are being relocated by major Southwest Missouri employers through corporate relocation companies. We also market nationally by making sure that your home is seen online through national syndication and we create a personal property website used for marketing purposes on every single listing we have. When it comes to global marketing, we have that covered as well. Naturally, online marketing has the potential to reach anyone in the world, but we take it a step further by utilizing the network that Murney Associates is a part of, Leading Real Estate Companies of the World (LeadingRE). The LeadingRE network is an exclusive network of locally owned real estate companies that are dominant leaders in their marketplace. This network is worldwide and outsells every single real estate network in the world, including all the franchise networks.